Harper with Rhoda's on-screen husband Joe, played by David Groh, who died of kidney cancer in 2008. CBS

"People respond to me as Rhoda, they see me as their friend. And that's great," she told the Record earlier this year. "I think the character just clicked with people because there was something real about her. She was Mary's pal and she always told the truth. Mary had this politeness and squareness about her. But Rhoda was Rhoda. She was a kick in the butt."

Harper later starred in the '80s sitcom "Valerie," which is most notable for the contract dispute that killed her off her eponymous show, but she got her start on Broadway (she danced in 1960's "Wildcat," starring Lucille Ball) and returned to the stage later in her career, winning a Tony nomination for playing Tallulah Bankhead in "Looped" in 2010.

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Rhoda may have been from the Bronx, but Harper was born in Suffern, N.Y., in Rockland County, and her father, a salesman, moved the family often. In her recent memoir, she says she got her first big break in South Orange — playing a snowflake at Mountain View School. (The family later lived in Pasadena, Calif., Michigan and Oregon and Jersey City.)

Harper decided to write her memoir "I, Rhoda," after battling lung cancer. Two days after the memoir was released in January, she got another diagnosis: leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a rare condition in which cancer cells spread into the fluid-filled membrane surrounding the brain.